'Clickers II: The Next Wave' – J.F. Gonzalez & Brian Keene (Deadite Press)

The plan definitely wasn't to be reviewing 'Clickers II' quite so soon (and you'll see why in a few paragraphs time...) but I had so much fun with the first 'Clickers' book that it was all too easy to just keep going. This time round, Mark Williams had unfortunately passed away and so Gonzalez invited one Brian Keene to share the writing duties on the sequel. I'm really glad that he did, 'Clickers II: The Next Wave' is a more than worthy sequel to 'Clickers' and it's this pairing that makes it all possible.

The first wave was just the beginning . . . The United States is in ruins. It has just suffered one of the worst hurricanes in history, the people are demoralized, and the president is a religious fanatic. Then things get really bad - the Clickers return. Thousands of the monsters swarm across the entire nation and march inland, slaughtering anyone and anything they come across. But this time the Clickers aren't blindly rushing onto land - they are being led by an intelligence older than civilization itself. A force that wants to take dry land away from the mammals. Those left alive soon realize that they must do everything and anything they can to protect humanity - no matter the cost. This isn't war, this is extermination.

Reading a sequel, right after the first book, is easy; I do it all the time. Reviewing a sequel only a matter of days after finishing (and reviewing) the first book... that's a little more difficult and something that I try to avoid wherever I can. After all, I want to keep things fresh and interesting here; how can I do that and try to make sure that I'm not repeating myself. That was the problem I faced here so I'll warn you in advance that this review may well end up being a little shorter than the last one.

'Clickers II' reads very similarly to the first book. Of course it does. After all, there's only so much that you can do with a book about giant killer monsters from the sea. Even so, bear that in mind f you've just finished 'Clickers' and are thinking about picking up 'Clickers II'. The good news is that Gonzalez and Keene do have a few tricks, up their sleeves, that don't necessarily make this sequel stand out from it's predecessor but do make the book one hell of a lot of fun to read.

The first trick is simple, do everything that made the first book great but do it bigger; bigger is better. And it's true, by pulling the camera back (so to speak) and focussing on a wider area, there are so many more opportunities for a more fleshed out story that Gonzalez and Keene run with to mostly good affect. I say 'mostly'... I didn't quite get the point of the New York bar storyline although I'm glad they're ok... And that's where the second trick comes in.

It's worth saying here that even though there are two writers sharing the load, I had real difficulty telling where Gonzalez ended and Keene began (and the other way round). I liked that, it kept things smooth and the plot purring along nicely. The only point where I could tell the difference was when there would be a few paragraphs on what was happening to survivors around America. That's Keene's work, I'd put money on it as he's done it before in his own books. Even if I'm wrong, I enjoyed the way that this approach added depth to the story and that even these 'bit part' characters ended up being ones that you could get behind and feel a little sad when they were inevitably eaten.

But going back to that whole 'bigger is better' thing. It's no surprise at all that this means that the monsters, and the bloody destruction that they wreak, is so much bigger than it was last time round. It's definitely no surprise that Rick Sycheck's life has gone several degrees past rock bottom. This is what 'Clickers II' is all about, ramping everything up to 11 and seeing how the characters deal with it, certainly an interesting way to manage a character study and an approach that Gonzalez and Keene pull off like they've been doing it all their lives.

You may feel like you've read 'Clickers II' already but give it a chance to do its stuff. If 'Clickers' was 'Star Wars' then 'Clickers II' is easily 'The Empire Strikes Back'. Bigger, better and definitely darker...